Doomsday
by Walks Two Paths
Summary: Just an insignifigant little story about some insignifigant events that happened in Faerun.


**Doomsday:**

**A Neverwinter Nights Fanfiction**

By Korrinda E. Taylor

(Please note that 'Neverwinter Nights' and respective trademarks are property of Bioware Studios, and is being used solely for the purpose of fanfiction, not for financial gain.)

Prelude: The Darkest Hour is just before Dawn

            A world of darkness and a bitter, freezing cold, that was what she dreamed, on her last night at the Academy.

She had been standing in a room, a dark room, feeling the weight of the shackles that were binding her hands and feet, surrounded by the guttural noises of a language she, a bard who had traversed the length and breadth of Faerun, and could speak all the common tongue, and a few of the uncommon ones as well, could understand no better than the howl of dogs.  

A thick smoke hung in the air, smelling like greasy, overcooked meat, and it made her eyes sting and tear.  Squinting in the blackness, for this was a room that was that contained only dimness by day, and blindness by night, she strained to make out the forms and faces of her captors, which she sensed, rather than saw, looming in the darkness above her, as they roughly shoved her small form into a group of beings who felt human.  The short chain of the manacles around her ankles caught then, and with an unintelligible yelp, she stumbled and landed on her face, with enough force to make her head ring.  

The one who had pushed her let out a loud bark, almost as though he were laughing, and stomped off, the hard floor vibrating with his every step.  The smell of the smoke was no better now that she was down on the floor; it was almost worse, the smoke mixed with the smell of unwashed bodies, and fear-sweat, and hate.  She realized that the other smells were coming of the people who may have been humans, and that scared her.  What did humans have to fear?

Gentle hands picked her up, hands that felt callous and work worn, and she haltingly apologized to the person who had helped her.  The human answered in a foreign tongue she did not recognize, but the voice had a reassuring quality to it.  She tried to smile at the person through the obscurity.  The heavy, metal links of the other person's cuffs brushed against her, chill against her already cold, bare skin, and she shivered, from fear, and the cold.

A loud gong suddenly chimed, from somewhere down the hall, and vibrated against the stone walls.  The resounding tremors very nearly knocked her off of her feet again, but, by crouching down, she managed to stand against the jolting.  The gong only seemed to increase the people who may have been humans' anxiety.  From somewhere in the back of the crowd, a high voice, a woman's or a child's, began to wail; a thin, high-pitched noise that cut through the scared murmurs of the crowd like a sharp blade.  A loud clanging noise from the hall caught her ear.  The captors were coming back.  A harsh voice snarled out orders, and one of the captors lunged toward the group with a hiss, eliciting screams from the frightened humans, whose vision must have been better than her own in this dark place.  

Something that felt very much like a hand, with long, grasping talons, seized her bonds and pulled her forcibly from the group, dragging her along the ground even as she struggled against the hand, and dug into the stone floor with her heels.  The hard granite scraped against the soles of her feet, making them bleed.  Growling at her, her captor cuffed her roughly on the back of her head, and her body lurched forward, jerking to a halt against the chains the captor still held in his hand.  

They had arrived at a door.  One of the other captors in their procession scuttled forward in the darkness, his strangely textured skin grazed her own, rough enough to open another wound on her flesh as he passed, as her nearly inert form hung limply from her cuffs, and he opened the entrance.

The first thing that hit her pain-clouded vision was the searing light from the one hundred torches that lined the path in front of them.  The temperature went from numbingly chill to unbearably hot, as the flames from the torches blazed.  The entourage had come out onto a raised platform in front of scores of beings, each one chanting and shouting out to the figure on the dais at the end of the path.  Once her eyes adjusted to the glaring light, she could finally see the strange beings who had mistreated her.  And what she saw made her blood run colder than the room she had just left.

Her captors were giant reptilians, easily three times her height.  Their green, glossy skin had a grainy texture to it that, if pressed against human skin, could cut into it, lacerating the flesh as it had done to her.  Every so often, as if to taste the smoky air, their forked tongues would flicker from between their pointed teeth, which were sharp enough to tear the meat of any creature from its bones, and then grind those bones into dust.  Their bodies were humanoid, rippling muscles under rough, scaled skin and finely worked armor.  

The creature on the end of the dais, in front of the large stone alter, was clearly the leader of these people.  Obviously female, she carried herself with regal air that commanded the respect of the other beings.  The males who dragged her along, apparently soldiers, paused at the end of the platform, waiting for acknowledgement from their queen before they continued.  She was finally able to look at herself, and was scared when she saw how pale and gaunt her body was.  Completely nude, save for a tattered, threadbare rag tied around her waist like a belt, she could plainly see the numerous scars that crossed her body, records from an untold number of beatings.

The lizard queen finished addressing the throng, and turned toward the stone alter.

She held, in either hand, a dangerous looking sword, which glinted and shone in the firelight, as she worked her arms over the alter in ritualistic gestures, and sang out an incantation in her guttural tongue.  Priestesses, arranged in two rows on either side of the queen, intoned the ritual with her, slowly at first, and then increasingly faster, as the crowd below, shouted jubilantly.  

The lizard queen turned suddenly and motioned towards the males.  Dragging her forward, they swung her small body up onto the alter, stained red from the blood of countless thousands of victims.  She started to struggle, to scream, and to cry, but the reptilian men where by far stronger than she, and held her firm on the stone.  The queen held both sword up over head, and shouted something to the mass triumphantly.  The crowd cried out its blood lust.

And then the swords came down….


End file.
